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The Ups and Down of Fiction Writing

I’ve written a few posts about my adventures in fiction writing (here, here, and here), and my inability to make a strong commitment is showing through again.

In my last writing post, I said that I was starting a new story, and I wrote the first three chapters and said, nope. I was proud of myself for planning out the entire story (almost 20 chapters), but as I wrote it, it seemed a little too close to home for me. I thought writing a story similar to what I’m going through now and pushing my emotions through that would work, but it ended up making me feel worse.

So that’s scrapped.

I started poking around the other night and jotting down ideas and looking through my writing Pinterest board, and I came up with a decent storyline. But I know I have to commit to it, because working on a fiction story takes time. The one I finished in January took about 10 months. I got a chunk of it written during National Novel Writing Month in November, and that sparked me to finish the rest of the story two months later.

I fell in love with that story’s characters, though, and my fear is that A. any characters that follow won’t seem adequate enough, or B. any character I write going forward will be very similar.

I know I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself, but I’m trying not to force anything that doesn’t feel right. I think I might try to flush out the new ideas I have and really break down the characters and what they want/their goals. I also haven’t been reading a lot of romantic fiction lately—I’m on a historical/political kick—so I think once I start reading that again, I’ll get some more ideas for characters, writing style, etc.

I also like to build Pinterest boards related to my stories, so I can visually see the environment they’re in, what I think the characters look like, or anything else that could help. I also created a Spotify playlist for my completed story that set the mood. But all of this builds from the characters and the overall plot of the story.

Stay tuned to see if I actually stick with this one or completely change my mind again. Because I love to torture myself, apparently.